the birthday party (and it’s invite) that will never be

While we were wandering through the Mission last month, my friend Sarah spotted a Super Mario pinata in a shop’s window.

It was just the seed I needed to declare that we would have a Super Mario themed party for Will’s upcoming birthday. Will, after all, loves nothing if not Super Mario, and how much fun we would have with our two televisions and two Super Nintendos–we could play in two rooms!!

I started hunting for Mario t-shirts to dress our two mannequins in.

I planned the menu: stuffed mushrooms and sugar cookies in the shape of feathers and flowers–the magical items that Mario eats to survive, spit fire balls and fly. We would have a lot of pasta because Mario and Luigi are Italian. And salad too, because that would make it a balanced meal.

I did some googling and found out that if I wanted to blow a wad on the party I could get Mario plates, cups, goodie bags, and life-size Mario decals to post on the walls.

As my head got away with itself and this way-too-fun project, it slowly dawned on me. Will didn’t want the party. I did. And I wouldn’t be a very good girlfriend if I made him listen to party-planning details the entire month before his birthday. That is a suffering he should endure but once a year — for my annual Jenfest.

And so this party will never be.

The worst part, though, is not the fact that I won’t get to share all these great ideas and our home with our friends, though I will miss that. And it’s not that we won’t turn those red and green baseball caps from Thrift Town into Mario and Luigi hats. No, we’ll probably do that anyway.

No, the worst part is definitely not getting to construct this amazing HTML email invite that I had planned.

It would have combined one of these (as the background)

…some text…and then…maybe one of these MarioMediumAni ……a little bit of MarioYoshiSmallAni ….and then who could leave off a MarioYoshiSmallAni2 ??